BP executive: Well could have been sealed sooner

A BP executive who led the company's efforts to end its massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico says its blown-out well could have been sealed sooner if a capping device had been built before the April 2010 catastrophe.

James Dupree testified Wednesday at a trial over the spill that engineers didn't have the equipment they needed to attack this particular well at the time of the blowout and had to formulate several possible solutions "on the fly."

After several other methods failed, BP ultimately used a capping stack to seal the well 87 days after the blowout.

During cross-examination by a plaintiffs' attorney, Dupree said it would have been relatively inexpensive for BP to build a capping stack before the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The focus of a trial over BP's massive 2010 oil spill has shifted from the causes of the deadly disaster to the company's struggle to plug its blown-out well while millions of gallons of crude gushed into the Gulf of Mexico for nearly three months.

The federal trial over the 2010 BP oil spill resumed Monday with a focus on the company's response to the disaster, with billions of dollars at stake as the two sides argue over how much oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico.

A Texas A&M-Corpus Christi researcher says the BP oil spill did at least moderate damage to the tiny animals that live on the sea floor for about 57 square miles around the Macondo well, with severe damage covering about nine square miles.